Reversing an unpopular community decision

Question

How to buck the system if the community makes a bad unpopular decision?

I ran across a question that was down voted 4 times as not important, but I could see that I did not understand the issue, so I asked clarifying questions. The end result is that we have what I think is a valuable question (and answer) with four down votes because four people did not take the time to try to understand the question. So my question about this question is how to handle the situation. Is there some way to request that a moderator clear the down votes so that this Q&A has an opportunity to be well received?

Assuming the moderator can override a community decision, what happens? By the way and (with what may seem obvious self promotion), shouldn't there be a badge or something for finding these bad decisions? If the site objective is to raise good quality information and reduce bad then reversing a bad decision ought to be encouraged (?)

EDIT:

If as stated by bluefeet, there is no way for moderators to remove such votes, the question becomes should there be such a tool? Or am I just reading this wrong and bad decisions ought to work themselves out by other community members voting?

Take this question as another example. I think it is useful for people to understand this issue clearly but asking the question is itself unpopular. Which creates down votes that in turn discourage the question? I'm new here so I'm just trying to understand the rules how the system works.

Answer 1

If as stated by bluefeet, there is no way for moderators to remove such votes, the question becomes should there be such a tool? Or am I just reading this wrong and bad decisions ought to work themselves out by other community members voting?

No, there should not be such a tool.

A note here: sometimes in discussions such as this one people bring up the fraud detection algorithms as evidence that such a tool already exists so they are not proposing anything new. The fact is that the fraud detection algorithms are not currently moderator tools, and nor should they be. These are batch processes automatically applying mathematical formulas, in the aggregate, by detecting voting patterns. These are fine.

The problem is the idea that moderators could on a vote-by-vote basis decide that votes could be invalid. I've said it before and I'm going to say it again: the day that moderators start having a say into whether individual votes are valid or not is the day SE dies. Few people are going to be okay with having their votes second-guessed by moderators, no matter how well-intentioned they are. The fact is that people disagree about what constitutes a good reason for voting up or down. Do you really want so have someone come in and declare your vote invalid because they have different guiding principles than yours?

I don't see any point in me voting on SE sites if a moderator can come in, decide that surely I was mistaken when I put in my vote and then declare it null to reverse the perceived bad decision.

Answer 2

All (non-fraudulent) votes are legitimate votes

With the exception of voting fraud there is no such thing as an invalid vote; people can vote for whatever reason they see fit (it is a vote after all). As such there is no way a moderator ever would (or could) override those. Further to that: downvoting a question because it's not sufficiently clear is even a conventional reason for downvoting!

Everyone's opinion is equally valid

It's important to remember that the people voting are just like you, and (one can only presume) thought they were right; what you are effectively proposing is that they are wrong but you are right and that their votes should be removed and yours should stay. Phrased like that it is clear that this is not a proposal that could work.

Use your votes if you believe a post is good

Ultimately if the rest of the community think something is bad but you think it's good then use your votes and vote up what you think is good; that's what they are there for.

Answer 3

Simple Fix

I think after reviewing the answers and comments that the best thing to do is just update the question (when one has the ability) and the problem takes care of itself. I just performed edits on the question to clarify it and the issue should right itself (if the edits make the communication valuable).

One Chinese idiom states:

三個臭皮匠，賽過一個諸葛亮 三个臭皮匠，赛过一个诸葛亮 
[san1 ge4 chou4 pi2 jiang5 , sai4 guo4 yi1 ge4 Zhu1 ge3 Liang4] 
lit. three ignorant cobblers add up to a genius (idiom);

referring to collective wisdom:
wisdom of the masses exceeds that of any individual

I accept the given answer although this simple fix would have sufficed.

smh